Author: Rhona Steel
Published: Apr 04, 2025 More by Rhona
Author: Rhona Steel
Published: Apr 04, 2025 More by Rhona
The Outer Hebrides are made up of around 114 islands, 15 of which are occupied by a population of around 27,000, mostly concentrated on Lewis. Also known as the Western Isles, they lie around 40 miles off the coast of Scotland and are the last stop before the Atlantic, making them a place of seafaring importance with a unique culture shaped by politics, climate, and migration and which quietly boasts a rich history and world-class heritage.
The 134-mile-long archipelago we see today is thought to have been one continuous landmass of gneiss that’s been carved and inundated by melting glaciers and rising sea levels. This interplay of land and sea still exists, as if a riddle caught in time. You don’t need a ferry to go from the Isle of Lewis to the Isle of Harris, as they are one island. You can drive between all five islands of the Uists on causeways. Learn more about the geology of the Hebrides here.
During the 2012 Olympics, extra ferries were laid on so the local fishermen could keep up with the increased demand for shellfish in London restaurants. And so here I am, sailing out to Lochmaddy on North Uist at midnight. The sea on this channel, we call the Minch, is so flat I think I could kayak across. The view of the Isles in the monochrome moonlight is timeless as we near the east coast shelter.
Lochmaddy gets its name from the Gaelic for wolves (now extinct there). They migrated some 12,000 years ago along with herds of mammals across the now-submerged landscapes connecting the British Isles to Europe. People, too, tracked their prey to these outer isles.
I roll off the boat into the pitch black and am instinctively drawn by the crashing of breakers to a beach where I camp. My 21st-century trip may not have required the personal skills and nerve that the first hunter-gatherers would have possessed, but as I sit on this shore, enjoying an early morning breakfast, I draw parallels, not least the intriguing thought that until around 3,000 years ago, the climate was warmer and drier.
The west coast is rocky and treacherous, but some beaches are ideal to pull a boat up. Behind the dunes, the wind has layered nutrient-rich sands to form machair unique to the west coast. If you go in summer, fields on crop rotation will produce a stunning carpet of wildflowers. At Northton, on Harris, archaeologists dug through 8 metres of machair to uncover a midden containing hazelnuts, which they carbon dated to nearly 8,000 years ago. Apart from fish and animal bones, these first inhabitants, like the Olympic fans, also had a penchant for shellfish.
Inland is a watery landscape of lochs and peat bogs whose secrets tell of a wooded landscape and settlers who farmed and moved around the region. In a bog on Lewis, they found Scotland’s earliest known intact axe, whose axehead most likely came from Ireland. On another ferry, a forensic archaeologist described diving in lochs to excavate crannogs (artificial islets). They discovered one of the 170 identified on the islands was built on a platform of birch and alder logs, instantly identifiable from the preserved 5,500 year old bark. The structure was littered with beautiful ceramics from the Hebrides and Unst in Orkney, one of which still had a smear of prehistoric porridge.
About 500 years later, but still predating Stonehenge, there are Calanais Standing Stones, also known as Callanish. Their use remains a mystery, but excavations offer clues: cleared woodland, pottery sherds from across the area, crops in the surrounding fields, additions of timber, a burial chamber, lines of stones leading to the cardinal points, and astrological lineups either by coincidence or design.
So, we might imagine a warm night some 4,000 years ago. It is late summer, and the setting sun’s rays have turned the surrounding cereal crops to amber. To the east, there’s a rounded hill that looks like a woman lying down and behind a full harvest moon rises as if the woman had given birth to it. This is a good omen, a symbol of fertility for the harvest and the continuation of the tribe. Way to the south, visiting boats have been pulled up onto the seashores of Loch Roag, and a hubbub of voices, foreign words, and accents echo around the stones. Within the stone circle, perhaps the leaders or shamans are congregated while most people process through the long causeway from the north. You might overhear stories being told about ancestors travelling to these lands or events occurring around the last time the moon performed this trajectory. There’s excitement about beautiful beakers of food and fermented drinks, and many are keen to trade with the visitors as the celebration continues into the night. We wait for the moon to set through the stones to the south.
If you’re interested in astroarchaeology, the summer of 2025 will be the next 18.6-year lunar cycle when a low moon rises behind the hill “Cailleach na Mointeach” or “The Old Woman of the Moors” in the east and sets in line with the stones to the south.
Warmer climatic conditions were also a factor in the North Atlantic (Medieval Warm Period), allowing the Norse to explore Greenland and trade valuable walrus ivory. In 1831, in the west sands of Uig on Lewis, a crofter unearthed a hoard of ivory game pieces on his land from this period, now known as the Lewis Chess Pieces. It is suggested that they were being taken south for trade when the boat was wrecked, the hoard washed ashore and buried in sand. Exquisitely carved from walrus ivory, they show a blend of cultures depicting Norse and Gaelic society. The knights are Viking warriors chewing on their shields. The royals sit on Celtic knotwork thrones, the kings with swords, while the queens hold horns for silver. Another 10th century hoard of silver found in the grounds of Lews Castle in Stornoway also contains a horn with a few Norman coins.
In the 12th century, a Norse-Gael leader called Somerled led a coup against the then-Norse ruler Godred and became King of the Isles. When he was killed in battle a few years later, the kingdom was divided amongst his sons, notably Ranald, whose rule included Uist and Barra, while Godred’s descendants ruled Lewis and Harris.
The MacDonalds (sons of Ranald) were a significant power in the area, trading the length of the British Isles and across to France with impressive fleets of galleys, making them the envy of the Scottish and Norse crowns. As Scotland’s succession was in flux during this time, allegiances were a gamble, but the MacDonalds backed Robert the Bruce and were rewarded with more land. While they kept up to date with continental culture and with the church, building impressive castles and chapels, like at Borve on Benbecula, they also mounted raids on other clans in the Hebrides and Irish Sea long after the Vikings. This led to clan feuds across the islands, which persisted into the 18th century and were classed as piracy by Scottish law. I met a storyteller from Stornoway who told a story that captures the rivalry between the MacDonalds of Uist and the MacLeods of Harris, as well as their seafaring prowess and warrior spirit.
To settle the dispute about who owned the outlying archipelago of St Kilda about 40 miles west of Harris, each clan leader was told they would race there, and whoever’s hand first touched shore on the island of Hirta would win. They set off in identical boats, but as they came within sight of Hirta, MacDonald realised McLeod had the edge, so he cut off his hand and threw it onto the rocks, thus touching shore first and securing the islands for himself.
Clan or claan means child in Gaelic, but members were not always related by blood. The system was based on the feudal system, where land and protection were given in exchange for fighting for the clan. Although the MacDonalds, Macleods and MacNeils were the dominant names, many other family names also come from this area.
The clans remained largely ungovernable until the Battle of Culloden when a military presence forced Jacobite sympathisers to forcefully forfeit their land to government-backed lairds (lords). This provided a compliant ruling class to implement the wide-scale and often violent clearance of people in the process of land reform.
The first 18th century wave saw many islanders removed from their fertile machair lands to unviable lots or crofts on rough ground, the worst example being on the east coast of Harris where the land is predominantly a bedrock of gneiss and very little is cultivable. The better land was selected for estate farms and sheep. Crofters were forced to supplement their income in the seaweed and herring trades. This set up trading routes to Glasgow and on to America in tobacco and sugar, facilitating migration south to work in the Industrial Revolution or emigration to America. When the herring and kelp markets collapsed in the 19th century, the lairds cleared more people, including the crofter who uncovered the Lewis Chess pieces. They brought in more sheep and created deer parks for sporting estates. By contrast, any crofter caught hunting or fishing salmon was charged with poaching. This century also saw potato famine, and many impoverished islanders emigrated, either forcibly or in search of a better life. As a result, clan and place names are found in Australia and North America. In Cape Breton, the Gaelic language and culture still thrive; some argue that it is better preserved than in Scotland, where it was stamped on. During the 150 years of land reform, some estimate as many as 20,000 souls left these islands.
Battle of Culloden
The clearances were mostly halted in 1886 with the Land Reform Act and a commission to redress the wrongdoings across the Highlands and Islands. In some areas, people were allowed to return to cleared villages, and crofts were established on fertile machairs. In other areas, the islanders were forced to mount land raids in protest of having no land, but they were met with military resistance. Despite the high number of people leaving the islands, the population of Lewis and Harris alone was higher than it is today, so many lived in impoverished conditions and had little choice but to leave.
‘Song to the Emigrant’ Oran do na Fògarraich, attributed to MacCodrum from North Uist, bard to the MacDonalds in the late 18th century, rouses people to look to a promising new life ‘for it’s better to leave of your own free will than live like slaves’.
During World War I, more soldiers per head of population from Lewis and Harris lost their lives than from any other part of the UK. Most notable was the Iolaire disaster of New Year’s Day in 1919, when a returning service vessel carrying sailors home on leave was wrecked on rocks on its approach to Stornoway harbour. Amongst the heroes of that night, a Lewisman man called John MacLeod swam ashore with a rope and was able to help save 40 fellow sailors in addition to another 33 who made it ashore, but 201 drowned.
It’s hard to imagine the sorrow of the islanders finding their bodies washed ashore the next day and the impact on families and subsequent generations. The disaster is all the more poignant as the returning servicemen had escaped the horrors of World War I and been given transport home for the New Year holiday, which was celebrated in Scotland as opposed to Christmas. This was regarded as a national disaster, and donations for relief for the surviving families poured in from across the country and the Hebridean diaspora.
The islands and surrounding seas remain important strategically. During World War II, RAF bases were set up on Lewis and Benbecula, which had some benefits for locals, such as improved roads and even a cinema. In 1941 the cargo ship the SS Politician ran aground on rocks off the island of Eriskay, however there was no loss to life or serious injury. It carried 22,000 cases of whisky and 3 million pounds worth of Jamaican bank notes across the Atlantic as part of the war debt to America. The islanders were used to using anything washed ashore and salvaged some of the whisky until the excitement arrived and attempted to stop it. A very entertaining version of the story has been made into the film Whisky Galore, 1949 and 2016.
In the 1950s, the Ministry of Defence overcame much opposition to establish weapons and missile ranges on South Uist and radar posts on Hirta in the St Kilda Islands.
Leverhulme, who established the company to become Unilever, bought the Isle of Lewis towards the end of World War I with innovative plans to make Lewis a fishing capital. This proved unpopular as it involved resettlement, whereas the government had promised land to soldiers in return for fighting in the war. Returning servicemen formed more Land Raid protests, which became effective in 1922 when the Board of Agriculture bought land and divided it into crofts.
Islanders had always woven tweed cloth, but its popularity grew in the Victorian era when they were commissioned to weave a tartan. The fashion took off, and Harris tweed gained notoriety as a warm and waterproof cloth, even used in the ascent of Everest.
Leverhulme invested in some looms for wounded ex-servicemen, some of which are still in use today. The Harris Tweed brand’s integrity is even protected by an act of parliament in 1993, identifiable by a label.
The Hebridean Way has two routes, either a 156 mile walk or 185 mile cycle, which go from Vatersay right in the south to the Butt of Lewis in the north and require just two ferries. It was opened in 2017 and links roads and paths across 10 islands. Many sections are steeped in history discussed above, and there is plenty more to discover, like the Coffin Road on Harris, which was used to carry people from outlying crofts to their family burial grounds. Whether you do the whole route or just sections, it’s a fantastic way to appreciate the history, scenery and wildlife.
On the ferry heading back over to Skye with a lovely group of walkers, we chat about our adventures and the fun we’ve had. We reflect on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s less fortunate tour of the Isles and his being rowed across with Flora MacDonald, disguised as her spinning maid, to escape on French boats moored off the mainland. We marvel at the resilience and warrior spirit of the islanders who risked their lives hiding him as he wound his way from one shelter to the next, often venting his displeasure. And we realise there are plenty more stories, people and places to explore there, where the seas and skies make the landscapes everchanging, and the imagination unfurls in the wind.
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